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Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?


cyst13

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Just finished reading the Digital Hero article about the evil race of Migdalars. Recently, on a thread about race and gaming, Michael Hopcroft wrote that he deplored the fantasy staple of evil races. Is the idea that an entire race can be evil an intrinsically racist concept, even if the race does not actually exist in the real world? Does the 'evil race' trope encourage fantasy gamers to think in negative stereotypes? Or is this merely entertainment which does not affect our real life thinking?

 

If you do not think the concept of 'evil races' encourages racist thought because this is just pretend, would it be acceptable to run a Earth setting campaign with the 'evil race' being conspiratorial Jews, Yellow Menace Chinese, or dark jungle-cult Africans? These have all been featured in the adventure entertainment of past eras. If you think it's okay to game evil Migdalars and Orcs but not evil Jews, Chinese or Africans, please explain why.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

The "evil race" concept is really racist, but it is cliche'd. In some games this cliche' work, in others it doesn't. If you want a very "black and white with no shades of grey" view of good and evil in your campaign, than having a intrinsically evil race works well.

 

As for "real Earth" stuff, when I run pulp games Germans and Japanese are always mostly evil - because this was true in the literary works that I am basing my games on. In modern day adventures I have no such thing as an "evil race" - instead I lean towards evil organizations and governments.

 

 

 

John D

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

I think the biggest difference from fantasy evil races and a hypothetical real world evil race is that in a lot of fantasy settings the race is evil for some metaphysical reason. That they are intrinsically evil on the spiritual level. Which in our own real world mind set we would have a very difficult time accepting.

 

An example, Orcs are evil because the Dark God corrupted (insert non-evil race here) Orcs are not evil because they choose to be, or that they were raised to be evil. They are evil because that is a fundemental aspect of them.

 

A hypothetical real world example Aryan Uber-mensch. The conspire to over throw the world persuing their own agenda of racial superiority. No matter how you get around it, as long as the race is grounded in the real world you not going to be suspend disbelief so much that you won't have that inkling in the back of your mind that if only you got to these people when they were young you could have changed them. That they are merely misguided, not truly evil. That they just need the right upbringing.

 

They only arche-type that comes close to a real world evil race are Evil Cultists. Human sacrificing worshippers of the Elder Gods if you will. These people tend to be framed as irredemiably evil. But even if a whole tribe or race of these people existed (The fictional Wakadoos of darkest Amazonia) you have the problem of you could still raise one of their infants to be an upstanding person.

 

Just my $0.02 and a dozen $0.25 words to spare :-P

 

TB

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Guest rholio

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Questions like this are why my gaming group never used alignment when playing AD&D. Is there such a thing as an evil race? Yes, but only from another's perspective.

 

It's much easier, and more accurate, to have evil cultures, evil deities, even evil places, than an evil race. For example, in our campaigns, orcish tradition values strength, cunning, and cruelty to non-orcs. Someone exemplifying those attributes would be concidered evil by most races, but certainly not by orcs.

 

Drow culture is one of believed superiority, and vengeance. All other races exist to further the drow cause. Is that evil? Yes, to most outsiders, they would be called evil. Is a drow that spent too much time talking with the slaves, and that leaves to go to the surface to discover what it is like, evil? Yes, according to his own culture; others may find him to be very brave and noble, to escape the evil of drow culture and beliefs.

 

Simply put, society can be evil. People as a group, can be concidered evil. Some races will believe others to be evil, due to prejudices or history.

 

However, individuals of any race are not inherently evil. That said, it's a game, and labels like good and evil save a whole lot of time. Personally, good and evil is a bit complex for me... I prefer them and us.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Just finished reading the Digital Hero article about the evil race of Migdalars. Recently, on a thread about race and gaming, Michael Hopcroft wrote that he deplored the fantasy staple of evil races. Is the idea that an entire race can be evil an intrinsically racist concept, even if the race does not actually exist in the real world? Does the 'evil race' trope encourage fantasy gamers to think in negative stereotypes? Or is this merely entertainment which does not affect our real life thinking?

 

Yes, it is a racist concept. The 'evil race' certainly encourages lazy thinking that obliterates the differences between race, culture, and environment.

 

But I love to slaughter orcs. They are so irredeemably evil that, we don't spend time trying to rehabilitate them or worry that Maagh is just trying to put food on the table for his wife and six kids. I like that spoolark sound, another orc is dead, I steal the gold from his dead corpse, complain that it was only a small handful of coppers and I move on.

 

But that's not my real life.

 

In real life, I have adrenline glands, its sole purpose, when threatened, to pump a chemical into my blood so that I can quickly assess a situation and kick butt or flee. That's real life. My thinking is already affected by these little things. Entertainment allows me to enjoy adrenline without kicking butt or fleeing.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

as everyone said, it is racist.

 

And it's also assuming you are coming from an equal moral standpoint.

 

Evil and Good are not absolutes, they are based off of one's moral plane, or point of view.

 

Evil to one is not evil to another.

 

To Ruk the Orc killing the enroaching human settlers trying to put up farms is not evil - he's fighting off an invander. To John the Farmer the invading orc is nothing more than an evil outsider burning his farm to the ground and killing him.

 

Is it evil that the Orcs didn't send someone to talk first? Well, maybe their culture doesn't have that concept yet, so to them it's not evil. In fact burning one farm may be their cultural equivilant of a warning shot.

 

the idea of Evil Races in most settings irks me to no end. I hate the idea that someone, even in fun and fantasy, would characterize an entire species like that.

 

Of course - this kind of thinking does spill into the real world. Most moderm combat training techniques, especially in times of war, will utilize "Dehumanizing Techniques" on soldiers to get them to think their enemy is not human but "An evil race" and thus upping the kill ratio of combatants. It is an extremely useful thought process when you need to invade and destroy another people .. and if two cultures are at war constantly (fanatasy or real life) then using the term "Evil Race" when one side is talking about the other works as long as you remember it's political jargon and not that one race is actually "evil".

 

 

my thoughts on it anyway.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

The first thing is to ask yourself -how- different your various races are from eachother. Are they peanut butter heads*, or are they -really- different, despite similarities in gross anatomy? IE : Is it racist to say that chimpanzees are not as good at sybolic reasoning as humans, or that humans are not as strong as chimpanzees?

 

Second, you have to decide for yourself how much of the way a person turns out is nurture and how much is nature. If nurture is predominant, then morality is largely a matter of upbringing. If nurture is predominant, then its the blood that matters, not the environment. A little of each, and sometimes, despite the best efforts of the "parent", the kid just turns out evil (or good!).

 

I tend to go for nurture peing -mostly- predominant as far as good/evil goes. If you get a wee little baby orc and raise him under different conditions than he would otherwise have been, his 'moral code' will turn out different as well. He may still prefer 'action' based solutions, since his physiology has a more highly developed "fight or flight" mechanism, but that doesnt mean he will necessarily be a bully. He may even develop some different habits, since his physiology will support them (example : his digestive system is more tolerant of things like spoiled foods, so they dont smell or taste bad to him. Subsequently, he often eats them, grossing out other people....)

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

That's one of the things I liked abit RuneQuest, there were exceptions to racial steriotypes. The source material mentioned a Broo who was a pacifist Healer, among others. Players in my campagine encountered a helpful Ogre, and a Dwarf philanthropist. Yes, If I had thought of it I probably could have done this in AD&D, but the point is, the source material didn't encourage it (and I was much, much younger then).

 

In fantasy RPG's all intelligent NPC's should be assumed able to choose between Good and Evil. A good GM should "cast against type" often enough that when they tell the players "You see a Troll," the player's reaction shoud be something other than "We kill it, loot the corpse, and go on."

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

I suppose that racial origin and philosophy of the tribe would have a lot to do with it. Suppose the adventurers have never heard of "orcs" before. Now they go into an area where the locals all live in terror of the "orcs". The "orcs" kill and eat humans, raid and burn and generally act "orcish". Now lets suppose that we discover that the "orcs" are all the great-grandchildren of an incestuous brother and sister that fled the authorities to escape execution for sexually assaulting, killing and eating a small child. All of the "orcs" know where they came from, they all engage in every manner of depravity among themselves and all the females are quite fertile and have no problems conceiving and delivering babies from the earliest age. The "orcs" no exactly what evil is, and they revel in being evil.

 

Now, would these "orcs" qualify as an evil race? I think so.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

This is one of those arguments that seem on the outside to be rational but really aren't at all.

 

The main point revolves around whether morality is absolute or relative. In our reality it is relative. An evil action from one perspective may not be evil from another.

 

In this reality any such concept as evil race is racist.

 

In fantasy realities - where magic works and Gods break your windows if you dis them - morality is often absolute. Those born into a race that follows an evil God will be evil - if the children are raised among good god-fearing folks then that child will revert to type. It can do nothing else - though it may rail and agonise over it.

 

In this kind of reality the concept is not racist - it is a reflection of everyday knowledge.

 

Absolute morality as a concept makes stories easier - no worries about whether killing is correct or not - your target is evil and deserves to die.

 

In our games it is difficult to keep moral relativism out of it and, if we are in any way educated, situations are more interesting if you can introduce even mild shades of grey.

 

So. There is no yes/no answer to the title question. It depends! :)

 

 

Doc

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

The notion of an evil race is racist in the real world because, despite what some superstitious types maintain, good and evil are not fundamental forces that bind the universe together like gravity and magnetism. They're abstract labels that humans invented and that can be abused by humans in any number of destructive ways.

 

In a fantasy world where evil (Evil, really) is an outside force as real as electricty, pointing out that orcs are Evil is not a matter of subjective human morality applied to destructive ends, but rather one of pointing out an objective physical truth.

 

There's a HUGE difference conceptually.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

I really do not buy this hoohah about fantasy games existing in a different reality than our real world. Yes, you can design a fantasy world with evil corrupting magic in which the frame of the fantasy allows for a consistently evil race. However, this does not answer my initial question. Is it a good thing for us in the real world to pretend to inhabit fantasy worlds that are specifically designed to make racist concepts reasonable? I could probably design a Nazi Hero game that posits Jews as being fundamentally corrupted by evil Kabbalistic magic, but I would never do such a thing for the obvious reasons?

 

While I am strongly opposed to the current war in Iraq, I am at least relieved to see that most Americans have been able to make the distinction between a few terrorists and the great majority of good-hearted Muslims. But does anyone remember the racist hysteria that gripped this country when Iran took our embassy personell hostage in 1979? I knew a lot of people at that time who equated the words Iranian and Shiite with evil. Even if it makes sense within the parameters of a campaign to view a given race as evil, I don't think it's a good idea in the real world (which even includes gamers) to create such campaigns in which the concept of evil races makes sense. While we may protest that we are all smart enough to separate fantasy from fact, when a big national crisis comes up and our leaders start tossing about terms like "Evil Empire" or "Axis of Evil", that thin line suddenly becomes quite vague indeed.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

It is a racist concept, as the human genome doesn't allow for a slider of morality. Basically, there is no "Good-Evil" gene. This is according to Steven Pinker with mentions from Dr. Chomsky.

 

However, cultures do vary in their senses of ethics and morality. There can be inherently evil cultures, who probably don't regard themselves as evil, or who probably regard evil as a beneficial practice.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

I think it all comes down to whether the objective reality in which the fantasy world exists (kind of a weird concept I know) has as one of its foundations the aspect of metaphysical truths. Where free will can be subordinated to larger things in the Universe.

 

Are morals quantifiable concepts in this world?

Are Good and Evil well defined?

Does the spiritual manifest in the physical?

Is physical reality only a part of a much larger whole such that what you see isn't necessarily the whole thing?

 

If you answer yes to any of these then, yes, you can have "evil races" without it being "racist" or "lazy role players".

 

There are other campaign world concepts that could also lead to the same situation.

 

I welcome others to submit other world aspects that would lead to the possible existence of true "evil races". Mainly because I'm getting tired of the constant imposition of the current modern view points of moral-relativism and concepts of jurisprudence not allowing for true campaign freedom.

 

You can't have a world where Evil exists because Evil doesn't exist, you merely have misguided people.

 

I had similar problems with a thread on the Enworld forums because there were people saying that a Paladin should lose his powers for lethaly dispatching a child rapist in the process of carrying out an attack. They vicerally objected to his not giving "fair warning" before striking and his carrying justice himself. Seemingly ignoring that the perp was caught red handed. They thought knocking him out and having a Judge carrying out the same sentence would have been any different than the physical manifestation of a gods will on Earth was a lesser form of justice.

 

I can elaborate why I think this position is absurd, but I'd like to here from others in Herodom.

 

TB

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Teflon Billy,

 

Beyond your personal annoyance with moral relativism, do you think that in terms of the larger, real-world society in which we all live, it is a good idea for gamers to intentionally create campaign-worlds which justify the existence of "evil races"? Does it make us better people to employ our imagination in this way?

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Teflon Billy,

 

Beyond your personal annoyance with moral relativism, do you think that in terms of the larger, real-world society in which we all live, it is a good idea for gamers to intentionally create campaign-worlds which justify the existence of "evil races"? Does it make us better people to employ our imagination in this way?

If you as a gamer can not distinguish fantasy from reality you have far bigger problems than the game.

 

I do not buy, even for one minute, that having Illithids in my campaign world (creatures that for time immemorial of role playing have been irredimably Evil) is going to lead me to believe that Arabs are subhumans, I have their language to deal with every day to show me that ;-P

 

I think this is making a mountain out of a mole hill or looking for problems where they do not exist. But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong :D

 

TB

 

P.S. Another thing, my imagination is mine, no one elses. The world does not own my imagination and I am free to do with it as a I like. Thought is not a crime. Now where was I? Oh, yes, Jennifer Connelly and the water soluble bikini...:whistle:

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Inherently I believe that this comes down to whether you can distinguish reality from Fiction… I mean one can argue that Orcs can be good in D&D. Why, because they are a condition of the environment they live in. They were raised that way. Orcs from Tolkien on the other hand are corrupted beings (elves really) Tainted with the shadow, and that infuses them with evil, Their creator, Morgoth, is evil, he knows it, he has a higher power to answer to, and that power has judged him evil, and he can accept that….

Now, does that make us think that there are an “evil†people here in present time, present location (however you wish to say our world, our look on life), well, I dunno, I’m not Psychologist, I have heard watching cartoons and playing video games make you want to kill, or at least make you so desensitized to it, that it would be easier. Does roleplaying start you on the road to Satan? For many families in the 80’s (hell, even today we’re fighting that stereotype) it did/does. This is the same question, are we all so weak willed that a little bit of difference is going to make us these people who stride against the grain of our culture, in the end, I believe that it’s your opinion, not mine, but yours that will make the difference.

As far as me, I’ve been all over the world, met all kinds of people, just because I kill orcs in game, it doesn’t make me a racist, living with my (older family) who believed in racism, has given me most of my tendencies, am I racist? HELL NO! However we all learn things from our culture, and that is what we learn, learning that that’s NOT how I see it, is just growing up, and taking responsibility for your own actions, much less opinions. It’s called thinking for yourself.

I was in the military, a Veteran of one of the numerous incursions we were involved in in the late 90’s through today. Most of the men I served with played lots of video games in their spare time before we went to war, Hell they were INFANTRY soldiers, “trained not to care†so all in all prime candidates for desensitization however, they shook, cried, and drank A LOT, when forced to get into a real firefight, or take a life. If you don’t buy it, talk to a Veteran of Normandy, Sicily, or any of the beach heads, or any of the fighting in WWII, it effected them.

All in all in my oh-so Humble opinion, you are born with the ability to accept, deny, or go along with whatever you hear or receive from whatever media source you wish, but hey, that’s me.

-Wolf

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

While we may protest that we are all smart enough to separate fantasy from fact' date=' when a big national crisis comes up and our leaders start tossing about terms like "Evil Empire" or "Axis of Evil", that thin line suddenly becomes quite vague indeed.[/quote']

 

Actually, when this happens, I tend to look at the national leaders as if they're wearing wizard hats or chainmail. It's pretty silly to paint with that broad a brush in the real world.

 

I think most people can separate fantasy from reality well enough that the game world can never be more than a caricature of the real world, and realize simplistic concepts that fly in a game's background story are impossible to apply to real-world politics.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

I mostly echo Doc Democracy, Yamo and Teflon Billy.

 

In a world where there is objective absolute right and wrong/good and evil, and powers/gods/whathaveyou that influence/control races to be one or the other, a race can be an evil race, and the situation is not racist. If that race partakes of whatever the campaign defines as objective evil, than that race is evil, and there is not racism about it. It is objective fact.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Many of my games focus on moral-relativism .. making people question the concepts of good/evil and right/wrong, both characters and players.

 

I can't do this without certain things - one, you have to believe in the concepts of good/evil, otherwise you are amoral (not immoral, that's different). An amoral person may act equally good and bad as they don't see a difference where someone with morals (of either bent) would.

 

I propose this thought: Yin/Yang

 

you cannot have one side without the other, and each side contains a bit of the other within itself.

 

Is it healthy to play a game where you have an Evil Race? sure. As long as one remembers it is just that. I would suggest that in balance you put in a Good Race that is as far down the otherside of the axis as the Evil Race is, thus placing the players majority races in the middle forcing them to evaluate themselves on a moral plane (am I good? am I evil?) Thus the stuff of truly epic stories can be made.

 

If you encounter a player who is comfortable with the idea of an Evil Race and you see that the idea easily flows from game to real life (statements of bigotry being a good telltale, but actions as well) then you have a problem. Unfortunately more gamers fall into this than you'd think. This is a world still rife with racial bigotry on both small and large scales, so I offer this advice: If you are going to include races of absolute evil do so with care and make sure everyone understand that this is just a game. Be careful not to have evil races mimic real world ones if possible.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

The notion of an evil race is racist in the real world because, despite what some superstitious types maintain, good and evil are not fundamental forces that bind the universe together like gravity and magnetism. They're abstract labels that humans invented and that can be abused by humans in any number of destructive ways.

 

In a fantasy world where evil (Evil, really) is an outside force as real as electricty, pointing out that orcs are Evil is not a matter of subjective human morality applied to destructive ends, but rather one of pointing out an objective physical truth.

 

There's a HUGE difference conceptually.

 

There's still the basic problem that the definition of "Evil" in the fantasy world is based on this worlds terms. Look at slavery. In D&D it is Evil. No ifs, ands, or buts. A nation (or race, to keep to the topic) that keeps slaves is evil. So, if the human nation that is Lawful Good beats the orcs that are attacking it, they cannot capture those orcs and put them to work repairing the damage they did - for isn't that slavery? Sure they can pay them, but if they are not free and are forced to work, isn't that the same thing? So the LG society can't do that, or else they become evil.

 

If you have an Evil god, why is he called Evil? Is it based on a relative judgement or is it because all races and societies view it as such? To use the terms "Good" and "Evil" as descriptors without any relevance to the actions/thoughts behind them makes no sense - it's like saying I have black hair but am Blonde, because that's what I say I am. Does that make sense? Basically, the argument is that when, in game terms, you label something as Evil, it renders all other decisions or discussions moot - it doesn't matter if said Evil deity is one who heals the sick and loves his mother, he is still Evil and that is that. Of course, you can favor the argument that alignment dictates actions rather than reflects them, in which case, he could not do those things because he is evil.

 

That's one of the reasons I don't like the idea of alignments. Things such as Law and Chaos, and the Balance, make more sense than Good and Evil. Less "wriggle room" in those concepts.

 

That said, there's the other side of the coin - the view of the characters. The game world is designed from, more or less, one point of view. If the dominant races (such as humans, elves, dwarves, etc) view themselves as Good, then by default the rest could be Evil. The designators contain the prejudices built in, which has no effect on relative truths, since the characters would see it as the world is set up. Thus, you can have an Evil race but have Good members - namely those who turn away from their own culture and act more like the "civilized" races. Yes, it is racist, but that's the way the world is set up, so while we might have problems with it, the characters wouldn't, most likely. Besides, if you didn't have evil orcs to kill, what would you kill? And, similarly, isn't the idea of different races in fantasy games inherently racist, since they are usually designed to do one thing better than other races? Doesn't that make the whole idea bad, then - that elves are superior archers, dwarves smiths, orcs barbarians?

 

To be a great hero (or heroine), you need great enemies. If your enemy is not evil, then maybe that diminishes the heroism, and dilutes the "epic" quality of the genre. Good for some types of fantasy, not good for others. High fantasy has a lot of the Good vs Evil convention, normally. Low Fantasy might, but might not either - the Stygians were generally an "evil" race, but there were exceptions, and in any case, Conan didn't worry too much about the concepts of good and evil, at least not the way we look at it.

 

I prefer to use no alignments such as those, and if my players want to kill orcs, then these orcs will probably be bandits, or allied to an enemy of the player characters, or merely be in the way - in most fantasy worlds, the value of life was usually cheaper en masse - although most characters valued their own hides, to them, other's weren't so fortunate.

 

My two cp.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

The main point revolves around whether morality is absolute or relative. In our reality it is relative. An evil action from one perspective may not be evil from another.
Thanks for clearing that one up. I guess a few philosophers and theologians are going to have to look for new jobs tomorrow.
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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

For those of you who think it is a simple thing to separate one's imagination from reality, would you consider it acceptable to play in a campaign in which Jews are an evil race who are using Kabbalistic magic to enslave the world? It would be the role of the Aryan PCs to stop the evil Jews by any means possible? This would be just imagination, right? So, is this okay?

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